As Hispanic poet Richard Blanco read his Inaugural poem, unifying imagery flashed onto the diverse screen of American experience.
Republican and Democrat; male and female; gay and straight; African and Scandinavian and Asian remembered.
One sun rises over Appalacia, the Great Plains, the Mohave Desert, the sky scrapers.
One sun illuminates folk inside soup kitchens and Congressional halls; beside chalk boards and empty chairs where 20 children once ate Cheerios.
Americans are united under one sun, he said. We matter. All of us matter.
Such specific and politically progressive imagery brought to mind the greatest Spanish poet of the 20th century, Pablo Neruda, who also illumined the power of man within a natural world.
Man was dust, earthen vase, an eyelid
of tremulous loam, the shape of clay --
he was Carib jug, Chibcha stone,
imperial cup of Araucanian silica.
Tender and bloody was he, but on the grip
of his weapon of moist flint,
the initials of the earth were
written.
(From "Amor America, 1400")
Pam Munoz Ryan's novel "The Dreamer" reveals Neruda as a young man with "suspicion and hope that there was something yet-to-be-discovered about himself that was magnificent – something that he had to share."
Richard Blanco embodied a similar suspicion and hope for himself; he left engineering to lay down poetry insightful to all Americans; startling, considering his early journey.
He was " made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States—meaning his mother, seven months pregnant, and the rest of the family arrived as exiles from Cuba to Madrid where he was born."
Munoz Ryan's beautiful young adult tale of Neftali, the boy who would become Pablo Neruda, gently, rhythmically defines the determination and sensitivity required for such greatness.
"The Dreamer" is recommended reading for middle school students, but appreciated by the poet in all. Peter Sis illustrated the novel.
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